Mary Sandberg Boyle, Vice President and General Manager of WGN Radio, stressed the importance of maintaining accessibility to AM Radio in vehicles beyond 2024. Despite suggestions from certain automakers to remove this technology from electric vehicles (EVs), there is a collective effort in Congress to protect the AM band.
Sandberg Boyle appeared on the Chicago Tonight Show on Tuesday to discuss the ongoing popularity of AM Radio, which still attracts millions of listeners.
“It’s very popular; it’s a public service issue and a public safety issue,” she said. “When cell towers are down, and the internet is down, AM Radio can still reach millions of people. That right there makes it important.”
AM Radio also offers a diverse range of programming, including news, talk shows, and cultural content, catering to a wide range of listener preferences.
As reported by the Chicago Tribune, Tesla has been excluding AM radios from their vehicles for a considerable period. Subsequently, other manufacturers, including BMW, Mazda, Rivian, Volkswagen, and Volvo, followed this choice and also opted to exclude AM receivers from their EVs.
“It’s a violation of the FCC not to have AM transmitting in vehicles,” said Sandberg Boyle. “They’re having to think long term on this because, for every one AM transmitter, it would take one full FM-powered station to cover the same coverage and even more cell towers. It’s much more cost-effective to have that in the vehicle than it is to think we’re going to make up for it with cell towers.”
The recently introduced AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act, put forward last month, proposes that all vehicles must provide “dashboard access” to AM broadcast stations in a way that is clearly visible to the driver.
“You can stream radio, but the technology of getting that way is different than what’s in a vehicle that takes the AM signal from a transmitter,” she said. “Also. It’s cumbersome right now to get to those streaming platforms while you’re in the vehicle. If I want to listen to the radio in the car, I don’t want to go through a few steps or go to an app and listen that way.”
According to Nielsen, WGN Radio registered a cumulative audience of 316,600 people in the most recent PPM rating book.
